‘Just give me a minute, and I’ll explain.’ Leaving the bags in the hallway, she raced away, dragging Tiger with her into the kitchen. Hugh followed to see them standing by the Aga. Verity crying, loud, dramatic sobs; Tiger covering her ears. ‘Stop, Aunt Verity. Stop!’

‘What the hell’s going on?’ Hugh cried.

‘You’ll never understand,’ Verity said, dashing her sleeve across her face, before grabbing a bottle of whisky from a cupboard, and filling a crystal glass.

‘Try me.’ It was all he could think of to say.

She shook her head, before knocking back the amber liquid in one gulp.

‘Whoever this little girl is, she’s malnourished, Verity. For Christ’s sake.’

‘I can’t help it if she doesn’t want to eat.’ She sounds flippant, her face grim. ‘I gave her food every day.’

‘Tell me who she is, Verity,’ he yelled. ‘Where you got her from.’ Anger boiled inside him, and despite the weight of the child in his arms, he raced forward, lunged at his sister, and grabbed her by the throat.

Chapter 39

Halloween Weekend 2019

Alice

Faith’s face falls from smile to frown in a fragment of a second. ‘And then you were gone. Stolen away. And you never came back, and Verity – my mother – cried all the time. And I had to care for her all the time, and life was horrible all of the time.’ She places one hand against her hip, like a handle on a milk jug; the other grips the knife so hard her knuckles are white.

Alice’s head aches with confusion, her heart thudding in her ears. ‘Why am I here, Faith?’

‘Because this is where you belong, Rosie – here with me – and this is where you must stay, forever and ever.’ She moves closer, runs her index finger down the flat of the blade, a peanut-size pulse thumping in her neck.

A whiff of her body odour catches in Alice’s throat; a surge of nausea churns in her stomach. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘My mother hanged herself in the stairwell of this house.’ A pause. ‘She’d given up, you see. Given up her search for her brother – for Hugh. Ironic really, as things turned out.’

Alice feels a sudden surge of sorrow pushing through her fear, but stays silent.

‘We lived in the cottage for years. Rarely came to the house. One day I woke and she wasn’t there. Eventually I found her.’ She looks down at the knife. ‘She left a note saying she was sorry, along with the diaries she’d written over the years. I think she knew they would explain everything.’ She shakes her head. ‘There was so much pain on those pages, as though written with her blood.’ She darts her eyes upwards, traps Alice in a stare. ‘I had no idea what she’d been through.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Alice forces the words out.